Last week Opera 10.0 was released in its final form. DailyTechhad
covered the development
process of the browser
exhaustively, so some may have been surprised not to see a piece on the
browser. That's because we were working on something, special
-- a complete review of not just Opera 10.0, but all next generation
browsers.

We have extensively benchmarked all
of the next generation browsers
-- Safari 4, Opera 10.0, Firefox 3.6 alpha 1, Internet Explorer 8, and Google
Chrome 3 and 4. In
this first segment we will look at basic features, install time, and
browser launch times of these next gen browsers, in comparison to
previous editions. In the second segment, we will look at CPU
and memory usage, and briefly look at browser security. And
in the third and final segment, we'll look at performance in CSS and
Javascript benchmarks, as well as a basic rendering benchmark.

1. User
Interface and Basic Features

Let's first look at browser features:

Browser

License

Prompts to
Make Default on Install

Prompts to
Make Default on Open

Uninstall Shortcut

Uninstall
Option to Delete Personal Data

Spell Checking

Colorized Tabs

Favorites Tiled Homepage

Built In Mail Client

Compression Boost
Option

Opera 9.6

Proprietary

No

Yes, popup

No

No

Yes

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Opera 10.0

(same)

Yes, Unchecked

Yes, popup

No

No

Yes

No

Yes

Yes

Yes

Firefox 3.5

MPL, MPL/GPL/
LGPL tri-license, Mozilla EUL

Yes, Unchecked

Yes, popup

Wizard Via Control Panel

Yes

Yes

Via add-on only

Via add-on only

Via add-on only

No

Firefox 3.6

(same)

Yes, Unchecked

Yes, popup

Wizard Via Control Panel

Yes

Yes

Via add-on only

Via add-on only

Via add-on only

No

Chrome 2

source-
BSD Executable
– Google Terms of Service

Yes, Prechecked

Yes, in frame

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

No

No

Chrome 3

(same)

Yes, Prechecked

Yes, in frame

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

No

No

Chrome 4

(same)

Yes, Prechecked

Yes, in frame

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

Yes

No

No

IE 8

Proprietary

Yes, Unchecked

Yes, popup

No, and harder to reach in Control Panel

No

Add-On (IE-Spell) only

Yes

No

No

No

Safari 3

Engine – GNU LGPL Everything Else - Proprietary

No

Yes, popup

No

No

Yes

No

No

No

No

Safari 4

(same)

No

Yes, popup

No

No

Yes

No

Yes

No

No

As you can see, when it comes to the user interface, Opera arguably
leads the pack, with the most built-in interface features (favorites tiled homepage, built in mail client, server-side compression, etc.).
Firefox is a close second, with the most features supported, if you
install add-ons (though add-ons decrease performance and can cause
compatibility issues). This assessment does not include security, which we'll look at in a later piece.

2. Installation

Google's Chrome is the easiest to install. Microsoft's
Internet Explorer 8, on the other hand, is the hardest to install, by
far, requiring a full system reset. In retrospect, the controversy over
IE 8 asking at installation if you want to make it your default
browser, seems rather silly. In fact, all the browsers ask
you this on startup, and Google even goes so far as to pre-check an
option during the install to make Chrome the default browser. We do
like how Google's post-install browser check is incorporate as a less
obtrusive browser window frame, rather than the popup that the others
used (all the browser allow users to permanently dismiss these
inquiries).

In our first benchmark, we did a clean install of each browser and
measured the time the install took, using a lightweight, hotkey-driven
timer for time measurement. As you can see from the chart to
the right, Internet Explorer (as with the uninstall) was the worst,
taking the most time (by-far) and requiring a full system restart.
Chrome 4 was the best, taking a mere 11.4 seconds to install after
double clicking the installer package (Note: Time to import bookmarks,
etc. was not
included in this time, just the time to complete the actual install).

3. Application
Launch Speed

Our second benchmark looks at browser launch times. We again
used the hotkey timer and this time measured the time it took for the
browser window to appear after double clicking. Page-load was
not necessary, the times measured indicated the time to get the address
bar to a responsive state.

In our first run, we launched the browser "cold" after a full system
restart. Averaged over three trials, Chrome by-far launched
the fastest, with Chrome 4 being the fastest of the Google
browsers. In close second was Opera 10.0. Firefox
3.5 was strangely slow, taking 10+ seconds in more than one trial, so
we launched it five times (stock install, no add-ons). We
finally concluded, that this was expected and not an error.
In the end Firefox 3.5 was the slowest to launch, but Namaroka (Firefox
3.6 alpha 1) launches much faster. IE 8 was the second
slowest in the cold launch trial.

In our second run we launched the browser "warm" after having already
launched it once. As can be expected, due to caching, the
browsers launched significantly faster this way. For warm
starts, Chrome was yet again the fastest, while Opera and Safari came
in second, though both of these browsers curiously showed slower start
times in their latest versions (Opera 10.0 and Safari 4) than in their
previous versions (Opera 9.6 and Safari 3).

In the next segment we'll look at memory and CPU usage. We'll
also examine how the browsers stack up in security.

Note: Note: All benchmarks
were performed in 32-bit Vista on a Sony VAIO laptop
with 3 GB of RAM, a T8100 Intel Processor (2.1 GHz), and a NVIDIA 8400
GT mobile graphics chip. The number of processes was kept consistent
and at a minimum to reflect stock performance.